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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Democrats swap barbs

Democrats Victoria Wulsin and Steve Black, vying for nomination in the 2nd Congressional District, met in Oakley Tuesday at a debate sponsored by the Hamilton County Democratic Forum and spent almost as much time slapping at one another as talking about issues.

The audience of about 300 listened politely as Wulsin and Black took turns agreeing on issues such as unions, the death penalty and immigration, and the failings of incumbent Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt. But when the candidates took shots at one another, cheers and boos rang through the auditorium of the historic 20th Century building.

Each accused the other of smear tactics; each questioned the other's character. Onlookers, who appeared to be evenly divided into Black and Wulsin camps, ate it up.

Black kept digging at his claim that Wulsin could have been guilty of an ethical lapse when she worked for the Heimlich Institute three years ago. An Ohio Medical Board investigation, opened at the request of an anti-Heimlich gadfly, has not been closed. (Whether it is actively being pursued or has been set aside is a question the board will not answer.) Wulsin heatedly denied there was anything wrong with her work for Heimlich.

Wulsin trotted out a charge of hypocrisy against Black, claiming he owns stock in Halliburton and the oil industry, even though he has denounced both in campaign materials. Black shot back that the manager of his IRA bought Halliburton stock, and that Black ordered him to sell it at a loss. The oil company stocks, Black said, are held in a family trust. "I can't do anything about that," he said.

Wulsin unleashed one bit of "gotcha" news late in the program, when she announced that she had received the endorsement of Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory.


26 Comments:

at 11:05 PM, February 19, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

.

The wRong wingnut whacko 'black mole' once again failed to answer questions about his big property tax breaks he gets claiming to be a farmer !

He can loan his campaign $195,000, but, refuses to pay his fair share of property taxes even though the county is running a deficit !

We think he is fleecing the hard working families in OH-02 !

Farm or Fleece .com

PATHETIC 'flip-flopper'

HAD ENOUGH, VOTE WULSIN 2008 !

 
at 11:22 PM, February 19, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

We have a Mayor?

Who's the Gadfly?

 
at 12:32 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

I went into tonight leaning toward Dr. Wulsin, but I'm no longer for her. When she couldn't even explain why she wouldn't put her issue statements up on her website for voters to read, that sealed the deal for me. Will she not put them up because she has no detailed views, or because she doesn't want us to know what she really thinks?

I was impressed with Mr. Black's poise in a crowd that was obviously stacked against him. He showed real leadership by not allowing Dr. Wulsin's unruly supporters to get under his skin.

I just don't think Dr. Wulsin can win. She has no real ideas and refuses to offer any specifics about her plans. I've stuck by her thus far, but I just can't do it anymore.

 
at 1:46 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Three Stooges (Wulsin, Black, Schmidt) are an embarrassment to this district. I pray the voters are smart enough to elect Tom Brinkman. We need a Congressman we can trust to work for US, not the big business, big oil, big union, and big government cronies who own the other 3 candidates.

 
at 3:59 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jim Parker should have thrown his hat in the ring. He nver did this kind of negative campaigning?

Was Parker at the HCDF event?

 
at 6:48 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

While the Enquirer has previously confirmed that Steve Black's comments on the pending ethics investigation involving Dr. Wulsin are accurate, her accusations of Black's ownership of Halliburton are demonstrably false - it has been on the public record for some time that Black sold his Halliburton stock once he learned it been bought by his retirement fund manager, and that certain other stocks held by his family are not under his control. Either Wulsin was poorly informed, or she chose to ignore the truth - neither scenario inspires confidence.

 
at 7:19 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Margaret McGurk: An Ohio Medical Board investigation, opened at the request of an anti-Heimlich gadfly, has not been closed.

Here's the complaint against Dr. Wulsin's license, filed by Robert S. Baratz MD PhD DDS of the National Council Against Health Fraud: http://tinyurl.com/32unan

Re: Ms. McGurk's characterization of Dr. Baratz as an "anti-Heimlich gadfly," the State Medical Board of Ohio likely has more knowledge of Dr. Baratz's history of challenging serious medical frauds. Here's a sampling, reported in publications of a somewhat different caliber than the Enquirer

Washington Post, June 29, 2004: http://tinyurl.com/2nlsc5

"We're off to the races with something that hasn't been conceptualized as a discipline. It's a hodgepodge of quackery taken to a new level," said Robert Baratz, president of the National Council Against Health Fraud. Baratz, a practicing physician in the Boston area, deplores what he believes is the squandering of research dollars on studying CAM. He also disputes the statistics claiming large numbers of CAM users -- statistics that are often cited to defend the need to study CAM.
According to an NCCAM survey published in May, more than 60 percent of Americans use some form of CAM. That figure, however, drops by almost half when prayer is excluded. "Lots of people pray," Baratz said, "but [NCCAM] calls it CAM...We call it SCAM." Joseph J. Fins, director of medical ethics at Cornell Medical School, shares Baratz's concerns about CAM statistics. "A lack of demographic knowledge has contributed to a disproportionate interest in the field...given other funding priorities," said Fins, who was a member of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy.


Time Magazine, May 8, 2002

That apparently wasn't enough to discourage Watson, who like too many other members of Congress is, to put it kindly, scientifically unsophisticated. The mercury in amalgam, it turns out, is not free, but mixed with silver, tin and copper, metals to which it bonds chemically to form a crystalline metallic — and safe — alloy. An obvious analogy, says Dr. Robert Baratz, president of the National Council against Health Fraud, can be made with water, a chemical combination of hydrogen, a gas that can explode, and oxygen, which supports combustion. Yet, like those in water, amalgam's components are tightly bonded to each other. "Saying that amalgam will poison you," Baratz insists, "is like saying that drinking water will make you explode and burst into flames." His view is supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which reported that "there is scant evidence that the health of a vast majority of people with amalgam is compromised" and the American Dental Association, which concluded that "there currently appears to be no justification for discontinuing the use of dental amalgam."

Business Week, January 16, 2006

Dentists who diagnose NICO often remove suspect teeth and bone and send them to laboratories to confirm the disease. To critics such as Dr. Robert Baratz, a dentist and physician at Quincy Medical Center in Boston, this seems absurd. "A biopsy is not ripping out a quarter of someone's jawbone," he asserts. "That's assault and battery."

 
at 7:24 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wulsin heatedly denied there was anything wrong with her work for Heimlich.

From Radar Magazine, November 2005: http://winston7.true.ws/

Mekbib Wondewossen is an Ethiopian immigrant who makes his living renting out cars in the San Francisco area, but in his spare time he works for Dr. Heimlich, doing everything from "recruiting the patients to working with the doctors here and there and everywhere," Wondewossen says. The two countries he names are Ethiopia and the small equatorial nation of Gabon, on Africa's west coast.

"The Heimlich Institute is part of the work there - the main people, actually, in the research," Wondewossen says. "They're the ones who consult with us on everything. They tell us what to do."

Wondewossen says that the project does not involve syringes full of malaria parasites. "We never induce the malaria," he says. "We go to an epidemic area where there is a lot of malaria, and then we look for patients that have HIV too. We find commercial sex workers or people who play around in that area." Such people are high-risk for HIV, and numerous studies show the virus makes its victims more vulnerable to malaria.

A key to containing malaria is speedy treatment. In the most resource-poor areas, clinicians who lack the equipment necessary for diagnosing malaria will engage in presumptive treatment at the first signs of fever. This, says Wondewossen, runs contrary to Heimlich's interests. What physicians in Africa usually do "is terminate the malaria quickly when someone gets sick," he says. "But now we ask them to prolong it, and when we ask them to do that, the difference is very, very big."

Untreated malaria is horrible and includes periods of 105-degree fever, excessive sweating followed by chills and uncontrollable shivering, blinding headaches, vomiting, body aches, anemia, and even dementia. Heimlich's malariotherapy literature recommends the patient go two to four weeks without treatment. Delay in treatment, warns the CDC, is a leading cause of death.

Wondewossen say that the researchers involved in the study are not doctors. He refuses to name members of the research team, because he says it would get them into trouble with the local authorities. "The government over there is a bad government," he says. "They can make you disappear."

Wondewossen won't reveal the source of funding for this malariotherapy research. "There are private funders," he says. But as to their identity?"I can't tell you that, because that's the deal we make with them, you know?" He scoffs at the question of whether his team got approval to conduct this research from a local ethics review board. Bribery on that scale, he says, is much too expensive: "If you want the government to get involved there, you have to give them a few million - and then they don't care what you do."

 
at 7:48 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Some other "anti-Heimlich gadflies":

("Malariotherapy") is scientifically unsound, and I think it would be ethically questionable...And it does have the fundamental potential of actually killing you - Anthony S. Fauci MD, NIAID Director, National Institutes of Health, ABC 20/20, June 8, 2007, http://tinyurl.com/2mzlsf

It is charlatanism of the highest order - Peter Lurie MD MPH, Deputy Director, Public Citizen's Health Research Project, Cincinnati Enquirer, February 13, 2003, http://tinyurl.com/y2zojw

If Heimlich is really doing this, he should be put in jail - Mark Harrington, Treatment Action Group, CNN/Reuters, April 14, 2003, http://tinyurl.com/2j75l5

 
at 8:12 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Can CIncy Mayor Mark vote in the Second Ohio COngressional District?


If not, why bother to even mention it?

 
at 8:44 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

It would be nice of Congressional Candidates and incumbents like Chabot, Schmidt, Bunning, McConnell and Voinovich would answer the question as to why the Federal Government has failed to fund the repairs or replacement for the Brent Spence I-75/71 Bridge.

Interstate Highway funding and maintenance is the responsibility of the Federal Government.

The Enquirer has failed to bring attention to this issue!

 
at 8:48 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Victorious Vic was clearly the winner of this one. Steve Black is clearly the Jeff Berding of this race. Where do the Dems come up with these low-lifes? Oh yeah, from the Republicans. It's time for the Dems to stop promoting self-surving, stop-at-nothing, dishonest politicians and start rallying behind their tried and true PUBLIC SERVANTS. Enough is enough.

 
at 8:50 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sounds like the Pot calling the Kettle Black!!

 
at 9:32 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

From What are Victoria’s Secrets? A Letter to the Enquirer’s Politics Editor, Cincinnati Beacon, February 17, 2008:

Over the past couple years, Dr. Wulsin has responded to our questions about her association with the Heimlich Institute and we’ve appreciated her co-operation. Recently, however, she and her campaign staff have failed to respond to our multiple request for answers to the following questions:

1) Has Dr. Wulsin received any communications about this matter from anyone associated with the State Medical Board of Ohio? If yes, what are they?

2) I’ve attached a copy of the National Council Against Health Fraud complaint, filed on November 3, 2006. Would Dr. Wulsin please provide a detailed reply to the allegations and specifically address why they are false?

3) What were the exact dates of Dr. Wulsin’s association with the Heimlich Institute as a paid employee?

4) Was Dr. Wulsin paid by the Heimlich Institute or was she paid by Dr. Heimlich or another individual?

5) Regarding her association with the Heimlich Institute, who first contacted her? Was it attorney Joseph Dehner or someone else? What was the date of that first contact?

6) Would you please provide me with a copy of Dr. Wulsin’s most recent curriculum vitae?

If the Enquirer is planning future stories on these matters, I’d appreciate it if you’d forward my questions to the appropriate reporter.

 
at 9:44 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

HAD ENOUGH OF OBAMA? Vote CLINTON 2008 !

 
at 9:48 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wulsin happens to be the Bold Typist's mother.

 
at 10:21 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

An anti-Heimlich "gadfly" Wulsin "trotted out" charges? Where did the Enquirer dig up this strange reporter?

 
at 10:23 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Where did the Enquirer find this Margaret McGurk lady? Did Malaria Ruin finally realize her donations to far left PAC groups led by George Soros prevent her from being truly fair and credible?

The Enquirer should make sure McGurk leaves her video iPod at home next time. Either she fell asleep during the debate, or was too busy watching "The Manchurian Candidate".

Steve Black DEMOLISHED "Doctor" Victoria Wulsin, but clearly McGurk was too busy creating a defense for Wulsin to pay attention. PATHETIC!

Steve Black will crush Victoria Wulsin in March, despite how hard the Enquirer "reporters" defend her.

 
at 11:10 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Last night when Steve Black was asked about his contribution to Republican Ken Blackwell he very clearly responded that the only contribution he ever made to Blackwell was when Blackwell was a democrat running for city council. Steve Black in fact made a contribution on 3-2-98 to Blackwells run for Secretary of State. At the time Blackwell was a Republican officeholder running as a Republican. I could care less who Black makes contributions to. As a republican he is going to make contributions to them. I DO care that he is LYING about it. Steve Black, stop the lying. Stop the smear tactics. Why can't you run on your own accomplishments and show some respect to the voters and to the process.

 
at 11:11 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wulsin heatedly denied there was anything wrong with her work for Heimlich.

The "research" being conducted by the Heimlich Institute was so radioactive that parent corporation Deaconess Associations closed the Heimlich offices in Spring 2005 and fired the two remaining employees, "Research Director" Eric Spletzer and secretary Vicki Roberts. Both of them are still in the area and can probably shed light on Wulsin's activities while she was employed there. So can the Heimlich Institute's vice president, Phil Heimlich, but it seems that when it comes to this subject, Enquirer reporters never get around to calling him, his father, or Deaconess executives.

If Ms. McGurk or others are interested, here's the current Heimlich Institute corporate board:

E. Anthony Woods, Chairman DEACONESS
Jane Mary Tenhover, Trustee DEACONESS
Barbara Lohr, Secretary DEACONESS
Henry Heimlich MD, Trustee
Philip M. Heimlich, Vice-President


While Queen City media snoozes, last year ABC Chicago flew to Cincinnati and broadcast this expose.

The Maneuver, November 16, 2006 VIDEO TEXT
The I-Team visited the impressive-sounding Heimlich Institute, which exists to promote Heimlich and his maneuver, on the accounting floor of a Cincinnati office. We found the office, with no one in it, the phone answered by a machine.

 
at 11:22 AM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Steve Black,
I am tired of hearing what you think Vic Wulsin has or has not done. I want to hear about what YOU have or have not done and what you are going to do. I don't want to see another UGLY mailpiece. I think your mail pieces have riled voters to the point of not wanting to participate. They certainly have not helped you.
Please stop this hateful campaigning.

 
at 1:21 PM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

As I understand the Heimlich-Wulsin situation, Wulsin was hired to review methodology and statistics for a Heimlich project. She reported back the the process was not up to usual standards or well-managed. In fact, her report was negative enough that the Heimlich group terminated her contract. In fact, SHE WAS A WHISTLEBLOWER! SOOOO, all you Wulsin-haters, stop believing the Black BS.

 
at 2:33 PM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Black's tactics smack of desperation. His ship is sinking and his 200k investment in his campaign is bearing no fruit so he is busting out his old Republican playbook and trying to swift-book Wulsin.

It is really, really disgusting.

And BTW, referring to Boratz as a "gadfly" was an understatement. He runs a po-dunk 17k a year operation in Boston that only serves to get him jobs as an expert witness on malpractice cases--for which he is paid handsomely. Boratz is a hired gun whose opinion reflects those who pay him--that is what he does as his career. I want to see his donor list...

 
at 6:18 PM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

The anon anti-Wulsin comments are all written by Black.

 
at 10:02 PM, February 20, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

I couldn't agree more!

 
at 11:15 PM, February 21, 2008 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Victoria wants more health care. Vic, you're a doctor. Open your door and provide health care.

 
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